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I don't think your going to succeed if you don't bite the bullet and start exercising, doesn't matter what. Because you're not likely to sustain the calorie deficit for the rest of your life and a overall lack of exercise is simply bad for your health
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Ivo Flipse♦Apr 1 '12 at 19:19

Its a start, but you need to walk way more than you would have to run in order to loose weight. so if your lazy, you'd prefer the easy way out, go for a run, so you can sit down again as fast as possible :P
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Ivo Flipse♦Apr 1 '12 at 19:22

How do I start running? I get tired immeditelly :)
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GomaApr 1 '12 at 19:25

Have a look at this answer for information on getting started. Trust me, I've seen people more overweight than you learn how to run and enjoy it
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Ivo Flipse♦Apr 1 '12 at 19:29

7 Answers
7

The main challenge will be to change your diet. Don't think about "starting a diet", think about "changing your diet". If you think about starting a diet, then you have an end in mind, and that's not the right way to think about it. For long-term improvement in health and sustainable weight loss, you need to change your lifestyle, not just "start a diet" and quit it when you've reached some goal.

If you've gained 20kg in 2 years, that's about 0.2kg per week, so on average, you're consuming approximately 200 calories too much per day. (Based on the assumption that 3500 excess calories results in 1 pound weight gain.) If you want to lose weight as quickly as you gained it (20kg in 2 years), you would need to reduce your daily intake by approximately 400 calories. This is all approximate, and that number will change as you lose weight, and it will change if you start doing exercise, and it will be different if you want to lose weight quicker, but removing 400 calories per day from your diet seems to be the minimum change you'd need to do.

Also, don't focus so much on losing weight as soon as possible. Focus more on a lifestyle of nutrition and activity that moves you in the correct direction, even if it happens more slowly. The things you would need to do to lose a lot of weight in a small amount of time are likely not the things that a person will be able to continue long-term.

The fact that you don't like running and exercises does not change the fact that you will need to do some. If you don't like running and exercise, perhaps you can find a sport. Badminton? Swimming?

Maybe barbell strength training is more your thing (you can definitely lose weight while doing weight lifting... it takes a lot of calories, so you might not want to remove as much calories from your diet in this case). You could get quite strong while losing fat, and might find it less tiring than running. And, once you're stronger and leaner, you might find running more appealing.

It's worth noting that those calorie figures vary wildly from person to person. If you're already overweight, odds are you need to reduce more calories than most people would to lose weight.
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Jordan BentleyApr 2 '12 at 19:38

I've found learning to cook can help a great deal. 1) it's a tiny bit of exercise just doing it and 2) you can make some pretty tasty better alternatives to fast food and restaurant food. It's generally cheaper as well. Vegetables and rice is always nice
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Tom SterkenburgMar 17 at 18:51

Depending on your current weight, that may be quite a high rate. A healthy average is 1% of your body weight per week. To lose that much that quickly, you would currently be well over 100Kg.

Secondly, if you want to keep the weight off "going on a diet" can be rather misleading. You need to change your current diet to one which will lead to you weighing 16Kg less. In other words change your diet permanently.

Loosing weight can be summed up quite easily. It all comes down to an energy balance. If you take in more energy than you need you gain weight and if you take in less you loose weight.

In the end it does not matter what diet concept you follow, because they all have the same goal: Make you eat less than your daily requirement.

For an average male adult this is about 2500kcal and for a female around 2000kcal.

The flaw of many diets in e.g. magazines is, that those may let you loose some weight fast, but once finished you gain weight again. Why? Simple, because you return to your old eating habits.

The only way is a change of your habits and the way you eat and prepare your food. What works for many people is eating food with a relative low energy density. This gives you the feeling of eating a lot while not consuming an enormous amount of calories.

In fact, just to make it clear, I recently came across a study where one test-group only ate fast-food (high energy density) for 4 weeks. This group ate a controlled amount of calories per day and none of them gained weight and all their vitamin/boold levels remained perfectly fine, but they said that they felt hungry all the time.

A better approach is to stick with what is generally called Mediterranean cuisine incl. low fat meats (e.g. chicken), reduced fat milk, little oil and butter, some pasta (wholegrain), etc.

I personally think that any special products in supermarkets (powders, shakes and what not) only decrease your account balance and don't do anything good.

Sticking to what I wrote above, it is allowed to sin a little. Eating a fattier meal one evening a week or sweets it is ok to do so if you balance your overall energy intake.

Some additional exercise is unavoidable if you want to speed up your weight loss. Try to find a sport that you like. A gym or running are not the only sports around! Try a few things, most places offer free taster sessions.

If you want to give running a go, try the c25k (couch to 5km) program. It is normal that you can not run for a very long time at the beginning. You did not mention you weight. In case you are very heavy do not hesitate to consult your doctor before picking up an exercise program.

I found this this Website lately and I think this is great for Beginners. It's easy to control your Calorie intake. You have to spend more Calories per Day than you take in. Don't just believe in the fact, that just working or doing the work you do everyday is enough to loose weight. I would recommend swimming, because you use a lot of muscles in your body. That means you get in shape, while burning Calories.

Can you summarize the points of the link here and use it as reference instead of just having the link itself? You would have a better answer if you gave it more context and information.
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Matt Chan♦May 31 '12 at 13:37

Losing weight is about expending more calories than you take in. As such, you'll get better results if you couple the diet with an exercise program and if you track your calories.

There are tons of different workout programs out there that have diet components to them. P90X (more geared towards working out at home w/ weights), Insanity (no equipment needed), and Body for Life (gives more of an overall framework rather than specific movements) all come to mind. Different people react better to different programs but they can all produce results. I suggest looking into them and trying out the ones which you think you'd enjoy the most, ie the one you'd stick to the longest.

There are also a bunch of free calorie trackers out there such as the one on livestrong.com. This specific one allows you to input your current weight/height and your goals. It will then automatically determine how many net calories per day you can consume in order to reach your goals. Tracking is helpful because it allows you to see if you can eat more food or if you should expend more calories in order to reach your goal on a daily basis.

Hormones are responsible for losing weight, not all but it is one of the culprits. What is the type of hormone is really the culprit? There was a time that I was contemplating why somebody eats a lot but gain no weight and I who eat less gain more. As I was looking for answer, it leads to hormonal factors. For some reasons, disciplining and eating what is the pyramid food chain enlisted is good to do. I started my diet with detoxification, to detoxify my body from toxins by drinking smoothies with spirulina powder - it helps to detoxify body naturally.

"detoxification" is a myth perpetuated by the greedy and the uninformed.
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JohnPMar 17 at 14:34

I actually agree that hormones are very relevant. However that's where my support for this answer ends... "detoxification" is bunk, and AFAIK spirulina is fairly irrelevant to hormonal tweaking. I would need a lot of citations (i.e. actual scientific studies) to get on board with this.
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Greg♦Mar 20 at 17:18